Google’s Bard AI chatbot is no longer limited to getting answers from just the web — it can now scan your Gmail, Docs, and Drive to help you find the information you’re looking for. With the new integration, you can ask Bard to do things like find and summarize the contents of an email or even highlight the most important points in a document you’ve saved. in Drive.
There are a whole range of use cases for these integrations, which Google calls extensions, but they should save you from sifting through a mountain of emails or documents. to find a particular piece of information. You can have Bard use that information in other ways, such as putting it on a chart or creating a bulleted summary. This feature is only available in English at the moment.
While giving Bard access to your personal email and documents raises concerns about privacy and data usage, Google says it will not use this information to train Bard’s public model, nor will it appear on human examiners. Neither are you THERE to turn on Gmail, Docs, and Drive integrations. Google will ask you to opt in first, and you can disable it at any time.
To use the feature, Jack Krawczyk, Bard’s product lead, said The Verge you can have Bard search within your Gmail, for example, by prefixing your query with @mail. Or, you can simply ask, “Check my email for information related to my upcoming flight.”
“This is the first time that a language modeling product actually integrates your personal data”
Bard’s extensions aren’t limited to Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google also announced that the chatbot will also connect to Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights. This means you can ask Bard to get real-time flight information, search for nearby attractions, surf YouTube videos on a topic, and more. Google enables these three extensions by default.
“The reason we started this experiment … is basically because it’s the first time a language model product actually integrates your personal data,” Krawczyk said. “We want to make sure we get that right.” Krawczyk added that Google plans to expand Bard’s integrations to more “products across Google as well as partners outside of Google.”
Google has also made other notable improvements to Bard. That includes a new way to double-check Bard’s answers via the chatbot’s “Google It” button. While the button previously allowed you to search for topics related to Bard’s answer on Google, it will now show whether Bard’s answers contain information that is confirmed or contradicted by Google Search.
When you press the “Google It” button on the supported answers, Google will highlight information that Search has verified in green, while any invalid answers will be highlighted in orange. You can hover the mouse over the highlighted sentences for more context on what Bard might have gotten right or wrong. Google also added a way to continue a conversation with Bard based on a shared link, which allows you to build on a question someone has already asked.
Since Bard was introduced in February, Google has gradually added additional features, including the ability to generate and debug code, as well as create functions for Google Sheets. Google recently added support for Google Lens to Bard, allowing you to use the tool to brainstorm caption ideas for a photo or find more information about it.
